‘Hacks’ Season 4 Introduces Show’s Biggest Challenge Yet: Deborah vs. HR

“Hacks” has never been shy about the fact Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is a tough boss. Over the past three seasons, Deborah has slapped, screamed at, ignored, belittled and even sued her key creative partner Ava (Hannah Einbinder). That long list doesn’t even cover the time she spit her gum into Ava’s hand. But thanks to taking over their late night show, that all changes in Season 4.

“It’s exciting for Ava, because she now gets to have HR,” series co-creator, showrunner and executive producer Lucia Aniello told TheWrap.

“Yeah, she’s needed that for four seasons,” added Jen Statsky — who also showruns and executive produces the show while serving as its co-creator.

It’s a good joke, which is a given when you’re talking about “Hacks.” But it’s also one that speaks to a central truth about this season. By accepting her dream job as the host of late night, Deborah Vance has walked into an environment where she is no longer the top boss. Instead, she has to answer directly to her network. It’s the panic, tension and frustration of that changed dynamic, coupled with Deborah and Ava’s ongoing feud, that fuels much of this ambitious installment which once again marks a major reset for the Max comedy.

“Putting them in an office context this season allowed more grist for the mill, so to speak, because there’s all these new things that they can have conflict about, whether it be management style, how to treat writers or even what kind of coffee maker they should have,” Statsky explained.

This change-up also prompted the writers and Smart to show off a rarely-seen side of the typically merciless Deborah Vance. Those moments often appear when Deborah has to report to her network boss, Helen Hunt’s Winnie Landell.

“Deborah has to fake laugh with her, and she has to play the game in a way that we haven’t quite seen before. That was very exciting to us, to put her into that corporate setting and say, ‘How does someone who is so used to running her own show for so long, how does she deal with this? How does it change her? How does she struggle with it?'” Statsky said.

If this were a less sophisticated show, it would be easy to imagine “Hacks” using this new dynamic as a comeuppance of sorts for Deborah. But “Hacks” possesses far too much respect for its leading women to take the predictable path. Instead of finger wagging over Deborah’s lofty expectations and unreasonable behavior, the show uses Deborah and Ava’s new bosses as a way to explore the leadership styles of these two women in a way that never wholly approves of or condemns either.

“These women move through the world very differently,” series co-creator, showrunner, executive producer and star Paul W. Downs told TheWrap. “Deborah is somebody who was forged in the fire of a man’s world. She believes in work, work, work and more work. And she believes in honestly scaring people sometimes to get that. It’s very Machiavellian. Ava is someone who’s like, ‘This is a democratic system. There’s no hierarchy here. We can have positive relationships that aren’t toxic with our employees.’ Yet that is still complicated because there is a power dynamic, even if you are someone who respects someone that you work with. I think it comes from their generational difference, but also it’s connected to the philosophical differences that they have.”

“We have never seen Deborah be in a position where she really had to answer to anybody, except her off-again, on-again boyfriend, whom she told to buzz off,” Jean Smart told TheWrap. “She’s used to being her own person, her own boss, doing her own writing and things like that.”

There’s also a bit of a through-the-looking-glass edge to this examination of different managerial styles. “The three of us started out as silly comedians, and now are middle management in a lot of ways,” Aniello said of her, Downs and Statsky. “We have our own perspectives on management styles, and we’re not quite Deborah and we’re not quite Ava. I think that that’s part of why we can be critical of both. We see them both in a certain way. It’s just another example of how we tend to put ourselves and our own perspectives into the show.”

“Hacks” Season 4 premieres April 10 on Max.

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